The difference between the 'First Australians' and the 'First Nations'

Aboriginal people on the continent now known as 'Australia' are not the 'First Australians', they are made up of peoples from the First Nations that all have their own specific names, and in many instances, speak/spoke their own specific language. Therefore as a group they are the First Nations peoples or Original peoples.

If anyone is to be named the First Australians, it would be the people associated with the British colonisers. Matthew Flinders who was the first to complete the British navigation of the entire continent suggested it to be named 'Australia' with complete disregard to the 600 - 700 Nations which were/are connected through the Songlines.

Terra Australis Incognita

(A basic outline of history) Published 2013 - Edited September 2016

For many thousands of centuries First Nations peoples worked the land, sea and waterways whilst studying the stars and weather and followed their seasons, passing the acquired knowledge onto new generations of their people and connecting with other Nations through their songlines. The Nations traded with each other, some trading with New Guinea and Indonesia.

Around five hundred years ago Europeans started to guess there must be a vast land in the southern hemisphere, and sometimes called it 'Terra Australis Incognita' or 'Unknown South Land'.

There was visits of Northern Nations and trading with First Nations people but their navigation charts and most of the remaining records are limited.

There is evidence of Chinese seafarers visiting the continent many centuries ago and there are ancient paintings still visible which depict Chinese junks.

Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of 'Australia' during the 17th Century, then the continent became known in Europe as 'New Holland'.

After Lieutenant Cook, navigated the East coast of the Great Southern Continent, and against his Secret Instructions and the international protocols of terra nullius, he placed the British flag in the soil.

It was the English explorer Matthew Flinders who suggested 'Australia' to become the official name used by the British invaders. Following his circumnavigation of the continent in 1803, he used the name 'Australia' to describe the continent on a hand drawn map in 1804. His map named the entire western half of the continent 'New Holland' and the entire eastern half 'New South Wales'.

His map was an outline of coast with no mention of Nations who habited the continent. Flinders map and book described his journey it was published in 1814 under the name the name 'Terra Australis', although Flinders stated that his preference was to call the continent 'Australia'.

The name Australia had appeared in print before this, but only broadly applying to the specific southern land mass now known as 'Australia'.

The earliest printing of the name 'Australia' was on an astronomical written work published in 1545 with the imagined southern land mass called 'Australia'.

The First Australians (also known as European, or white Australians) were, and still are, Europeans etc, whereas the peoples of the First Nations, made up over 600 individual Nations, were/have been on the continent for many hundreds of thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. First Nations peoples Storylines (Songlines) tell us that they were always here, as written in the lore, disputing the 'Out of Africa' theory.

The 'First Australians' term appeases the colonisers and the peoples they invite to join them, because it masks their illegal occupation and helps with their efforts to fully assimilate First Nations people and to leave their cultural heritage behind them, so the actual First Australians can further assume more land and wealth.

There are exceptions to all rules and some Aboriginal people are proud to call themselves 'Australian', sometimes through a lack of understanding of its implications, sometimes because they choose 'Australia' over Aboriginality and for various other reasons.

Most First nations people mainly call themselves 'First Nations people', 'Originals', 'Aboriginal', 'Indigenous' and in some case an 'Aborigine'.